Iacobus

by Matilde Asensi

  “No, I don’t want bloodletting,” he said hastily. “I think that carrying all this weight and maintaining myself on bread on water until my death is sufficient.”

  “Fine, whatever you want. Let’s carry on walking then.” We left the valley behind and climbed the path to Fonderia. At midday we walked through the Espelunguere jungle and crossed the river, heading towards the Peyranere slopes. We couldn’t have picked a better time to cross the mountains and enjoy the splendor of nature; we were surrounded by large pines, firs and beeches, poplars and wild roses and were accompanied by Pyrenees Ibex, squirrels, deer and wild boar. Following the same path in winter, though blizzards and snowstorms, would have been suicidal. Nevertheless, many pilgrims prefer to because the risk of coming across bears or thieves is greatly reduced.

  We walked all day, using the infinite silhouette of the splendid Peak of Aspe as our reference, that cliff of sheer, pointed rock that guides the steps of the pilgrims to the highest point of the summit, the Portus Asperi or Summus Portus, which is where the real Way of the Apostle begins. We had barely put a foot on the summit, when Jonas, exhausted from the effort of the climb, the weight of our frugal belongings and the days of fasting, fainted.

  Fortunately, a short distance away on the downward slope was the Hospital of St. Christine, one of the three largest pilgrim hospitals in the world —, the other two were the Mons Iocci, on the route to Rome, and the one in Jerusalem belonging to my Order —, and while Jonas recovered from his martyrdom and his wishes to wear ‘the thorny crown of the chosen ones’, I had to search for accommodation at the inn in the nearby town of Camfrancus (14).

  The physicist who examined him at St. Christine’s said that he would need at least two days to recover his strength and continue the Camino. In my humble opinion, a good meat and vegetable stew and half a day of sleeping would have been enough for a full recovery but as I was only supposed to be a noble knight who was doing the pilgrimage to Compostela in poverty to be forgiven for gallant debts, it was not in my jurisdiction to give medical advice.

  As I had nothing else to do, early the next day I followed a pass down to Jaca, with my brimmed hat pulled down to my eyes: I remember that on that day the sun was shining even brighter than the sun that had accompanied us throughout our journey. It was my intention to thoroughly examine the land and not miss any details that could be useful. I told myself that, logically, it would be there, at the start of the Camino itself, where signs should begin to appear, or the necessary keys to interpret those signs. It would have been absurd of the milites Templi Salomonis to distribute their great wealth along a long and busy pilgrimage route without establishing the language needed to recover it at the beginning of the route itself.

  I left the course of the River Aragon to go into the town of Villanua. I’m not sure what made me stop there but it was a bit of luck because inside the small church I found a black image of Our Lady. An intense happiness took over me and filled my heart with joy. The Earth, the Magna Mater, radiates its own internal forces outwards through veins flowing under the ground. These currents were called ‘Earth Snakes’ by the ancient cultures, that had since disappeared, who used the color black to represent them. The Black Madonnas are symbols, signs that indicate in these Christian times, and only for those who know how to interpret them, where these internal powers emerge with greater strength. Sacred, arcane places, beautiful places of spirituality. If one day man no longer lives in direct contact with the earth and therefore could not absorb its energy, he would lose himself forever and would no longer form part of the pure essence of the Magna Mater.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, still, absorbed in my thoughts, meditating. For a few hours I recovered myself, I recovered the Galceran who had left Rhodes to find his son and learn new medical techniques, I recovered internal peace and silence, my own inspiring silence, from which flowed, like a prayer, the beautiful verse of the poet Ibn Arabi (15): ‘My heart holds everything …’. Yes, I told myself, my heart holds everything.

  I didn’t reach Jaca that day, of course, but I did the next day, when I crossed the river by a stone bridge, leaving Villanua to my left. I entered the city through the Gate of St. Peter, following the pilgrim’s route, and I came across a clean and welcoming city, although too noisy. It was market day and people were milling in the square and under the arches amid a deafening noise and a great clamor, shoving, name-calling and bickering. However, all external perception was put on hold when I suddenly saw the tympanum of the west door of the cathedral, the access for pilgrims who went there to pray before the statue of the Apostle and before the relics of the holy martyr Orosia, patron saint of the city.

  It was not the superb eight-armed Chi-Rho (16) that caused my stupor but rather the magnificent lions that flanked it because besides their incomparable perfection — I had very rarely seen them so beautifully reproduced —, both of them were roaring, for whoever knew how to hear them, that the building contained ‘something’, ‘something’ so important and sacred that one had to enter the premises with their five senses wide awake. The lion is an animal with solar significance, closely linked to the concept of light. Leo is also the fifth sign of the Zodiac which means that the sun passes through this sign between the 23rd of July and the 22nd August, that is, the hottest and brightest time of the year. In the universal symbolic tradition, the lion is the sacred sentinel of mysterious knowledge, whose cryptic representation is the black snake. And indeed it was a snake beneath the lion on the left, or more precisely, the lion on the left appeared to be protecting a human figure holding a snake. The lion on the right, meanwhile, was crushing a bear’s back with his paw, a symbol, due to their lethargy, of old age and death. But the most interesting part of all was the tablet at the foot of the tomb, with the following engraving: Vivere si queris qui mortis lege teneris. Huc splicando veni renuens fomenta veneni. Cor viciis munda, pereas ne norte secunda (17). What else could that call be referring to — ‘If you want to live, you, who are subject to the law of death, come pleading …’ —, if it was not the beginning of the initiation process? Was Jaca not the first city of the sacred Camino, marked from the sky by the Milky Way and followed by millions of people since the world was made? St. James was no more than the Church’s explanation for a pagan phenomenon with very remote origins. Long before Jesus was born in Palestine, humanity had been traveling tirelessly towards the end of the world, to the point known as Finisterre, the ‘End of the Earth’.

  What was the important thing that the Cathedral of Jaca guarded inside? I had no choice but to enter and look for it since it was clear that the lions could be a clue for something but would never reveal a secret. I went from one side of the temple to the other, sniffing around every corner, every pillar, every column and every ashlar, and I finally found it next to the cloister, in the Chapel of St. Orosia. Nestled in a nook hidden by the shadows was a tiny seated statue of Our Lady, holding a cross in the shape of a Tau! I say that it was a statue of Our Lady because it was presented as such, although I had never seen a statue that was less sacred or less adorned with symbols of her greatness. It was a young woman, dressed in court robes, with her head encircled by a vulgar ducal crown and a sly smile on her lips. Her whole body language, with her stiff torso, her legs exerting force on the ground to hold the weight of the cross, and that way she was sitting on the edge on the bench, her whole attitude, I believe, was intended to showcase the Tau, pushing it forward as if to say: ‘Take a good look, look at this cross that is not really a cross but a sign, think about it, I’m putting it right in front of your face’. I made a good note of everything I saw and happily followed the path back to my inn.

  Shortly after dawn the next day, I went to the Hospital of St. Christine to collect Jonas, who was still sleeping on his cot, face down, as if an arrow had shot him in the middle of his back and he had fallen face down with his dislocated body. I approached him slowly to not wake the other sick people in the room and gladly breathed in its clean
and healthy smell. I couldn’t help thinking about my hospital in Rhodes, just as airy and neat as this one. How I missed my home! However, the memories were starting to become vague and imprecise and for the first time I had a swift and inexplicable feeling that I would never return.

  In the bed next to Jonas’, a strange looking old man stared at me with two black, shiny eyes, like two ravens. He was drying his lips after taking a large swig from a gourd that he left on the floor next to his bed. He had a frail and gnarled physique, with enormous dangling ears with abnormally bulky lobes and he was almost bald, with the remains of some fine, gray hair around his head like a laurel wreath. His gaze was hard and hot, with mineral reflections, and his movements were almost feline, a rapid softness quite in tone with that sly grin he was giving me.

  “You are Don Galceran of Born, Garcia’s father,” he said with such conviction that it surprised me. I don’t remember having seen him the day I left Jonas there.

  “Correct. And who are you?” I whispered while I carefully sat down on the edge of the boy’s bed.

  “Oh, I’m nobody, sir, nobody!”

  I smiled. He was no more than a poor, half-crazy old man.

  “You remind me of Ulysses, from Troy,” I said with good humor, “when he said his name was Nobody to fool the cyclops Polyphemus (18).”

  “Well, call me Nobody, if you please. What difference does it make to have one name today and another tomorrow? Everything is the same and different at the same time. I am the same person with any name.”

  “I see that you are a wise man,” I said to flatter him, although in actual fact it was a little sad to listen to him talk such nonsense.

  “My words are not nonsense, Don Galceran, and if you thought about them a little bit you would see that.”

  I made a gesture of surprise and looked at him questioningly. “What are you so surprised about?” he asked me.

  “You replied to my thoughts and not to what I said.”

  “What difference is there between what one says and what one thinks? By paying careful attention to people you can see that whatever they may be saying, their face and their body express what they are actually thinking.”

  I smiled again, amused. That rickety old bag of bones was just a shrewd and cunning man. Nothing else.

  “Your son told me that you are headed towards Compostela,” he added, wrapping himself up in the blanket, leaving only his head uncovered, “to pay homage to the Holy Body of the Apostle James, the brother of the Lord.

  “Correct, that’s where we are headed, if God so desires.”

  “You’re doing a good thing taking the boy with you,” he said strongly. “He will learn many good things during the journey which he will never forget. You have an excellent son, sire Galceran. Garcia is an extraordinarily sharp boy. You must be very proud of him.”

  “I am.”

  “And he looks just like you. Nobody can deny that he is your son, although the main features of his face differ slightly from yours.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  I was getting tired of the conversation but seeing as the curt tone of my answers didn’t seem to bother the old man, I frowned and turned to Jonas.

  “I see that you want to wake the boy.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to offend him but I had other things to do.

  “I see that you want to wake the boy,” he repeated eagerly.

  I still didn’t answer.

  “And I also see that you do not wish to continue talking.”

  I ruffled my hand through Jonas’ messy hair to wake him. There was not the slightest sign of his earlier monastic tonsure in that head.

  “Fine by me,” muttered the old man with indifference, turning around. “But don’t forget, Don Galceran, that my name is Nobody. You gave me that name.”

  And he slept like a baby as the sun began to pour in through the openings in the wall.

  “What were you talking about with the old man?” asked the sleepy voice of Jonas as he slowly began to return to life, turning around so he was lying on his back.

  “Nothing important,” I replied. “Are you ready to continue walking?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to continue with your aspiration to be a martyr?”

  “Oh, no, not anymore!” he said, very convinced, opening his eyes and sitting up in front of me. “Now I want to be a Knight of the Holy Grail.”

  “A Knight of the what?” I asked, jumping up.

  Youth is a really terrible time of life, but not for the person who is going through it, as they say, but rather for the people who have to put up with it.

  “A Knight of the Holy Grail,” he repeated as he got up and looked for his clothes.

  “Fine,” I said with resignation, handing him his breeches and doublet. Although it seemed incredible, Jonas had grown even more during those days of convalescence. His lanky body had gone through another growth spurt and his breeches were ridiculously short. If he carried on like that, he would soon be taller than me. He looked at his bare legs and smiled happily. It was practically impossible to deny the evidence of his origin — especially because I was always comparing —, and the similarities with his mother were much more evident than the differences.

  To my dismay, during the following days I had to listen to endless stories about the fascinating legend of the Grail. According to Jonas, well-informed in these matters by the elderly Nobody — whom he called ‘the old man’ —, the Holy Vessel was hidden in a mysterious temple located on a mountain called Montsalvat, jealously guarded by one person, King Amfortas, who carried out his mission with the help of the perfect and pure Knights of the Holy Grail, who were just like angels. It seemed that the best knights were Parsifal, Galaaz and Lancelot, the boy’s flamboyant heroes, who united their unimaginable religious passion with feats of chivalry, each of whom he told me about in great detail over the long five days it took us to reach Eunate, on the outskirts of Pons Regine (19), a town that linked the two routes of the Camino de Santiago that enter Spain, the Summas Portus and the Roncesvalles.

  I will admit that the whole time Jonas was talking, my thoughts were someplace else. I listened with infinite patience for a while and when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I blocked out his long-winded speech with my own thoughts until some exclamation, complaint or request brought me back to harsh reality. It’s not that he didn’t care whether I was paying attention or not (I suspect that he was perfectly aware of my distractions) but it was his awkward and imprecise way of building bridges between us, even though they went straight over my head. If his training continued along the right path, he would find out that bridges are built between people by paying close attention to what the other is saying, and not by wearing our their ears.

  During our days of walking between Jaca and Pons Regine, we passed by many suggestive places and I paid careful attention to them. However, disappointment began to twist in my spirit, oppressing and strangling it like a tourniquet. The truth is that I had spent too long away from my people, from my friends, my colleagues and brethren of the Order. It had been a long time since I had been able to voice my concerns with someone, without time for my studies and my work. I began to feel as though I had been banished, like a leper condemned to live far away from his people. It was like all of a sudden waking up from a dream and finding out that my life up until then had not been real. They had changed my life and my identity without me realizing, without me having done anything other than obey orders. It was mortifying to think that not even my own Order seemed to care about the consequences that it could have on me. Didn’t anyone care that every day the Perquisitore felt more and more like a frere without a community? Would the Hospital of St. John be aware that one of its monks had been threatened with death by Pope John’s henchmen? Count Joffroi of Le Mans, although invisible, was my constant nightmare. I couldn’t forget about the fact that he was a faithful dog of His Holiness in the strictest sense of the term and that
he wouldn’t blink twice before embedding the blade of his sword into my son’s chest to obey the Holy Father’s orders.

  That day in mid-September, we woke up covered in frost for the first time and our limbs were stiff with cold. It was clear that summer was drawing to an end and that autumn was just around the corner. The days began to be terribly hot during the day when the sun was at its highest but deadly cold as soon as it set. I was beginning to feel the change in the weather in my old scars but most of all in my calloused feet which swelled to a point of making walking difficult. Luckily, in a house where we had stopped to rest, I had managed to prepare a mixture of cow marrow and fresh fat which really helped with the inflammation and the pain.

  The Way of the Apostle bears off to the left when leaving Eneriz to take you to the Chapel of Eunate. Lost in the solitude of the countryside, its belfry guided pilgrims through a vast, desolate plain.

  As we were approaching, I realized that Eunate could be even more than it seemed at first sight: It could be what we had been waiting for for weeks, it could be a starting point, a hope for the beginning. My heat was racing and I had to make a great effort to contain myself and not run towards it, leaving Jonas alone on the road. I also had to be careful not to lose control of my emotions, as you never knew who might be watching.

  “What does that church tell you, Jonas?”

  “Should it tell me something?” he asked contemptuously. Since the previous night his body seemed to have been taken over by a powerful emperor. It happened every now and again.

  “I want you to look carefully at its structure.”

  “Well, I see a church with basic proportions and sparsely decorated.”

  “But what shape is it?” I insisted.

  He stared at it with indifference.

  “It seems to be octagonal. I can’t see it very well. And it’s surrounded by an open cloister. The truth is that it’s rare to see a church with a cloister on the outside and not inside, like this one.”